The Passion story revisited

Opening Words

The Windhover

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, kingdom
of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion.
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Amen.

Sermon

First, an apology in advance. If I say anything that offends you, please try to see me the way you would a visitor from another culture, or planet, who committed some faux pas. He may eat with his elbows, or make odd noises—not because he’s uncouth, but because he doesn’t know any better.

I first heard about Palm Sunday when I was in college at the University of Miami. One Sunday, my three roommates came running into the apartment as I was having breakfast, waving palm fronds around. They seemed to be very excited to have real palm leaves, since where they grew up, they used to get paper ones. One of the advantages of going to school in Florida, I guess. Anyway, I asked what all the excitement was about, and they said "We’re celebrating when Jesus went to Jerusalem, and then you killed him!"

"Oh… well,… sorry about that…"

"No, it was good that you killed him, because he died for our sins and then was resurrected on Easter!"

"Oh, well then… you’re welcome."

We then proceeded to play the soundtrack from Jesus Christ Superstar, which I had never heard, and we sang along to all the songs. I was immediately taken with the soundtrack, because the best songs went to me: Judas! A couple of days later, we went to see the movie.

So that was my introduction to the whole Passion story. I was immediately fascinated with it, partly because of the drama of it, and my central role, as the representative of all Jews, but mostly because of the moral message of Jesus. The whole strength through passivity and compassion, the love your enemies, the turn the other cheek. That stuff all resonated with someone who had grown up watching Kung Fu. Yes, the TV series. David Carradine plays a Christ like figure who is driven unjustly from his home, and wanders the desert ministering to the sick and the weak, and preaching the holiness of compassion and peace.

And then there were Jesus’s themes of working to build the kingdom of heaven right here on earth, and of personal responsibility—the idea that you don’t need a mediator to experience the holy.

I was all "yeah! Right on!" I could have joined Jews for Jesus right there. In fact, I even went to one of their meetings.

Except I never really got the other stuff, about Jesus dying for our sins, about him being somehow God, or the son of God, or part of a God triumverate, in which all three members were actually the same one. It all was central to Christian doctrine, yet to me it seemed so superfluous and kind of silly. It was like a huge step back to a supernatural, egotistical god who demanded complete obeisance for no obvious reason.

Which made me wonder: what really was the idea of god like when Jesus marched into Jerusalem way back then. Was it a tyrant god? Was it a god of miracles? Was it a god of cathedrals and incense and costumes? And if Jesus was a devout Jew, how did Christianity become so expressly non-Jewish?

So that’s why I wanted to do this sermon: to give me a chance to answer those questions I’d had for years. As I began to look into it, I became quickly overwhelmed. There are few subjects more written about than the origins of Christianity. I mean, who were the first people printing books? Christian monks! And what were the first books ever printed on a printing press. Bibles! Christians were the first to take advantage of publishing, and they’ve been at it ever since. In fact, I work with a printing company that prints all of our science materials down in big factories in Tennessee. My colleague went down to visit them one day, and came back with stories of how the presses run day and night churning out Christian materials of various sorts: books, calendars, CDs, wall hangings, bookmarks. They grind away 24 hours a day turning trees into Gospel.

Sadly, but fortunately for me, historical and explanatory works are only a tiny percentage of all this writing. The book that inspired this sermon is Karen Armstrong’s “A History of God.” She spent seven years as a Roman Catholic nun, then became a literature professor, and finally wound up on the faculty of the Leo Baeck College of Judaism and the Training of Rabbis and Teachers. She’s a skeptic, but seems to believe in religion and spiritualism. On line, I read long excerpts from Robert Price and Joseph McCabe, both of whom are doubtful about the authenticity of Biblical texts, and even of the existence of a historical Jesus. Finally, I read N.T. Wright and John Rankin, who look at the Passion story critically, and conclude that it is factual.

So, to my first question: When Jesus, assuming he really did exist, rode into Jerusalem around the year 30, what did people think? It’s a hard question to answer. What do people in Washington think? All sorts of things. There are a variety of religions and belief systems, sects, cults, factions—and that’s just the Unitarians! But what is clear from Karen Armstrong’s book is that Jewish culture and religion, despite the Roman occupation, was flourishing. At that time, one-tenth of the Roman empire was Jewish. In Alexandria, 40% of the population was Jewish. The Romans gave Jews full religious liberty. It was known that Judaism was ancient, and the Romans had great respect for things of great antiquity. As the Romans travelled and conquered, their many local gods seemed too small. As Armstrong puts it, “monotheistic ideas were in the air.” Many, possibly millions, of Romans who didn’t want to be circumcised and observe all the many rules of the Torah became honorary Jews, known as Godfearers.

And here’s something that may surprise you if you’ve read the various Gospel stories about Jesus in Jerusalem: The Pharisees were the liberal new free-thinking rabbis of the time. Here is how Karen Armstrong puts it:

"The most progressive of all the Jews of Palestine were the Pharisees… In the New Testament, the Pharisees are depicted as whited sepulchres and blatant hypocrites. This is due to the distortions of first-century polemic. The Pharisees were passionately spiritual Jews. They believed…" And see if this sounds familiar… "that the whole of Israel was called to be a holy nation of priests. God could be present in the humblest home as well as in the Temple… Jews could now approach (God) directly, without the mediation of a priestly caste and an elaborate ritual. They could atone for their sins by acts of loving-kindness to their neighbor; charity was the most important mitzvah in the Torah; when two or three Jews studied the Torah together, God was in their midst." All of these new Jewish beliefs are echoed in the teachings of Jesus. So he was not a radical, a thorn in the side to the Pharisees—he was one of them. Later, Paul writes that he studied at the feet of the Pharisees—hardly something he would have bragged about if they were Christ killers.

The leader of the Pharisees was Rabbi Hillel the Elder. The story goes that a pagan came to him and said he would convert to Judaism if Hillel could recite the whole of the Torah while he stood on one foot. Hillel replied: “Do not do unto others as you would not have done unto you. That is the whole of the Torah. Go and learn it.”

So here we have the dominant group of rabbis teaching things that were pretty concordant with the most reliably reported teachings of Jesus at that time. So what happened? Why did the story of a popular Jewish teacher who was executed as a dissident become the Passion story we know today, with the rabbis and their followers cast as the villains?

Well, even during the time of Jesus, there were many Jewish groups in Palestine who opposed Roman rule, and wanted to drive out the occupiers. The zealots were looking for the coming of the Messiah, who was prophesized to lead them in revolt, and scatter the heathen occupiers. After the death of Jesus, but before the writing of the Gospels, the Zealots led a remarkable revolt, and held the Roman armies at bay for four years. Finally, in the year 70, the new emperor, Vespasian, decided enough was enough. He sent an overpowering force into Jerusalem to crush the rebellion. And not only did he quell the uprising, but, in an attempt to set an example for any other Jews who had thoughts of rebellion, he led a kind of Shock and Awe campaign, culminating in the utter destruction of the Jerusalem temple. He renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolana, and drove the Jews into exile. It was at this time that a schism formed between the followers of Jesus and the members of the other Jewish communities. The early Christians were pacifists, and therefore opposed to rebellion and generally friendly with the Romans. In addition, elements of Roman, Greek and Pagan traditions were being introduced into early Christian ideas. There was even talk of Jesus having been divine, and having been resurrected after his death, just like the pagan gods Tammuz and Attis, the Greek god Heracles, and the Egyptian god Osiris. The other Jewish communities, even those who were friendly with the Romans before, became polarized against them after the campaign of Vespasian. And the idea that Jesus was more than a prophet, but was actually holy and, most blasphemous of all, was the embodiment of earlier, Pagan gods, was just too much. The Jewish establishment openly opposed and ridiculed the Christian movement, and the Christians, in their brand new writings, began to depict the Jews in a less than flattering light. The schism wasn’t yet complete, and most Christians still considered themselves observant Jews. But this schism set the tone for many of the Gospel stories. And when Jews became the villains, the Romans in the story, like Pilate, became more sympathetic.

There seems to be some historical evidence of a prophet named Jesus, from Nazareth, his pilgrimmage to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, pilgrimmage many devout Jews undertook, and his subsequent execution as a dissident. And I don’t mean there’s strong evidence, but there is some, and non-Christian writers not long afterwards do not dispute the story. So there’s something in that. But there is no mention of the whole Passion story until decades later, in the Gospels. And the four accounts in the Gospels differ substantially. Paul, who was writing the earliest, says that 500 people witnessed the resurrection—a fact that’s not repeated in any of the later accounts. Many of the other particulars differ in the Gospel stories, too, including where the apostles went to meet the newly resurrected Lord. Some say they had to travel to Galilee to see him; others say he met them in Jerusalem.

So what are we to make of all this? Well, it so happens that just about the time Jesus was visiting Jerusalem for Passover, other religious observances were also taking place throughout the Roman empire. Observances that the Jew from Nazareth would have found abhorrent. In one, Pagan worshippers hold up green reeds and wave them in the air to welcome a handsome and charismatic god into their midst. But five days later, there was a far more somber procession: the young god, Attis, had been killed by his enemies, and now priests carried his pale, dead body, tied to a small pine tree, crowned with violets. The next day was the Day of Blood, where followers of Attis rended their clothes and injured themselves in grief. And on the next day, Attis rose from the dead, resurrected as his followers rejoiced.

This ritual, and others very much like it, representing the re-birth of the earth in Spring, and the return of the sun as it passed the vernal equinox, was practiced for many centuries before the time of Jesus. There are some versions of the story in which the god is born of a virgin mother, shows early signs of precociousness and amazes wise men and priests, is driven from his home, wanders in the wilderness, and returns triumphantly before being murdered and resurrected.

In fact, these stories were so well known, that early Christian apologists had to address the concern that the Passion story of Jesus was nothing more than a clumsily reworked recitation of these ancient myths. One explanation was that Satan, knowing of the future arrival of Jesus and his tribulations, created all of these false myths in the centuries preceding the time of Jesus. That way, people would be skeptical of the Passion story when it really happened.

Joseph McCabe goes into exhaustive detail, describing the many resurrection myths and their parallels with the story of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. He even tells how Ezekial, in the Hebrew bible, describes the abomination of women weeping over the soon to be resurrected body of Tammuz—another version of the god Attis who dies and is resurrected in spring. One reason for the early popularity of Christianity was it’s ability to draw myths and imagery from existing traditions and make them its own. McCabe and Price argue, persuasively, I think, that this is exactly what happened with the Passion story.

Now, no discussion of Palm Sunday is complete without at least a mention of Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ. He has taken a lot of criticism for what many view as a gratuitous excess of violence and for anti-semitism. In his defense, the original Gospels are pretty anti-semitic as it is. Mark depicts the Jewish authorities conspiring against Jesus; the more recent Gospels of Mathew and John are fiercely anti-semitic, culminating in the line in Matthew where the Jewish mob say "His blood be upon us and on our children!" That line was in the film, but Gibson decided to drown it out with general crowd noise in the final cut.

On the other hand, there are many details in Gibson’s film that do not appear anywhere in the Gospels and could lead you to believe that he created them just to be mean spirited. Likewise, you might think the huge amount of detailed violence that he threw in was odd and unnecessary.

But Gibson didn’t make these things up. He created his film by the book—but not the book you think. The inspiration for The Passion of the Christ was not the New Testament but a book describing the visions of a nineteenth century German nun named Anne Catherine Emmerich. When it came to communing with divine spirits, Anne was very precocious—as a child she had frequent encounters with Jesus, Mary and various deceased saints. As Joe Nickell writes in “The Skeptical Enquirer,” Emmerich made a show of being Christ-like, sleeping on planks placed on the ground in the shape of a cross, and from the age of 24 claiming that she experienced the pain of Jesus’ crown of thorns. Soon she was exhibiting a full complement of stigmata: wounds on her hands and feet, and a cross cut into her bosom.

She had visions of various sorts, including a series in which she witnessed the last days of Jesus. These were put down in "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ" and it was this book that inspired the Mel Gibson film. Her visions were marked by graphic detail when it came to the scourging of Christ, and the villainy of the Jews. But religious scholars concluded that her detailed descriptions revealed a complete lack of knowledge of what Jerusalem was like at that time, and owed a lot to medieval art and fables. In short, she was not considered credible. But Gibson found in her writing the detail, and the good versus evil storyline that was lacking or inconsistent in the New Testament, and he could see immediately that it would help him make a film that had visceral appeal. And it did.

Well, the cross that I, as a skeptic, must bear is that my passion is dolorous by nature. No matter what I do, I’m going to be the wet blanket; the party pooper; the nay-sayer. That’s why we don’t invite many skeptics into the pulpit. We suck the fun out of everything. So, to counter that, I just want to say that there is so much to rejoice in in this story. The message that Jesus and the other young Turk Jews of his time were spreading that you are important. That you are sacred, and have your own special relationship with the God or the Cosmos, and you are the architect of your own spirit—forget that original sin stuff that came much much later. And how you live on earth is what will lead to heaven—not a heaven up in a cloud somewhere—that’s been shown to be a misinterpretation—but through compassion and by leading a moral life, you can have the god-like power to help create heaven here on earth. That’s a message that’s so true and inspiring.

And the story of the resurrection, a fable that itself has been killed and resurrected over and over throughout our history, speaks to our hope—that even in the bleakest of hours, even when no breath of life stirs, there will be renewal, and spring will come again.

Amen.

Meditation

Matthew 21: 1 - 11

1 And when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Beth'phage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples,

2 saying to them, "Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find an ass tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me.

3 If any one says anything to you, you shall say, `The Lord has need of them,' and he will send them immediately."

4 This took place to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet, saying,

5 "Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass."

6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them;

7 they brought the ass and the colt, and put their garments on them, and he sat thereon.

8 Most of the crowd spread their garments on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

9 And the crowds that went before him and that followed him shouted, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!"

10 And when he entered Jerusalem, all the city was stirred, saying, "Who is this?"

11 And the crowds said, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee."